New blog address

My blog address has changed to www.earthboysblog.com

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Helping Ocello in the Garden

Our property is quite large and it takes days for Ocello to mow the lawn.  My husband does all the larger areas with the tractor lawn cutter and Ocello mows the places that can’t be reached with the tractor.  Tractor rides are so much fun for the children.

Then our little workers follow along side the lawnmower waiting for the magical shavings so they can deliver it to the compost pile and of course dive into it every now and again.

Taking a break

Kitty ride

Loading the rocks

My children decorating a flower bed in our garden with beautiful big white river rocks. They made the flower bed look very pretty.

A house in the local village

Yesterday we dropped off some grass and plants at a local village home where seven children live. The ground is hard and unpleasant for the children to play. We would like to help make the garden a little more comfortable and attractive for the children to enjoy.

The back of their garden

This is Elizabeth and her sister.  Elizabeth, along with her elder brothers and sisters often come to visit our farm because we have a beautiful play area for the children to have fun.   They enjoy swimming in our pool and this has helped with their confidence since most Dominican’s don’t know how to swim.

We brought them coconuts, palms, banana palms and other plants.  Luis in the red shirt is the eldest brother that lives in the local village house, he helps me with my horses.  Anes and Raphael are wonderful Haitian workers that live on our farm.

The children enjoyed working in the garden.

Lets hope it rains and if it does not then we will deliver water in a large tank.

Some fat pigs slipping and sliding in the thick clay mud just off the road.  There were about 20 of them, mostly piglets hiding in the bushes.  These were lucky pigs since most of the pigs are kept in tiny cages just big enough for them to turn around.  My children were amused.

Precious Moments

The Sun Egg

The beautiful little fairy finds a sun egg.  Will it hatch into a ‘sun chick?’ She calls happy frog to come and see

All Elsa Beskow’s books are my children’s favorite

This morning (at 7am) whilst I was getting dressed my children found their way to the water.  We go through many change of clothes in a day.

Swimming at the stream

Another beautiful day trailriding

The fern dresses the palm so elegantly

When they flower we have thousands of bees.  You can hear them buzzing throughout the farm since it’s a paradise of palms

Another street dog has found it’s way into the comfort of our home and he’s much loved

Morning Glory Tepee

Yesterday we set up our tepee sticks that Ochello helped us cut from the jungle and Sasha prepared the holes to sow the seeds.

Sasha went to get the compost from the compost pile

Sania holding onto the Morning Glory seeds. A spectacular blue flower creeper. My children know not to put it in their mouths, since it can be toxic.  Moonflower or Beans would be better option but I didn’t have any of those seeds left and my children insisted on the Morning Glories, they know which plants to respect.  We also sowed some seeds of gourds,  cosmos flowers and sunflowers.

Our moonflower tepee we made a few years back

Sasha with some local Dominican children

My friend Christina recently made a beautiful one out of bamboo and wrapped silks around it.  http://momenttomomentdk.blogspot.com/2010/06/bamboo-projects.html

Beautiful wood

Our beautiful trees create so much pleasure for our children, we never cut them, our wood we get is usually from fallen trees/drift wood after tropical storms, the one below is still alive and very beautiful we did get many branches from it.  We plant hundreds of trees all around our property every year to create beauty and shade.

to climb…

to balance…

to cut…

to play…

a fence for sheep…

a boat

a sculptor Sasha made

to float

beauty

Papa’s Birthday Surprise

Fabien and the boys

Happy Birthday Papa.  A day to celebrate a special husband and precious father.  Always around to help in every way he can to make parenting easy for me (he’s now become an expert cook like his mother). When Sasha was born, I still often remember Fabien putting Sasha in his sling and walk him through the garden whilst still dark so I could catch up on much needed sleep. When Sasha turned three we made the decision to move to our farm in Dominican Republic, leaving behind his business and our urban lifestyle. Fabien could now spend his time with the children.  An amazing adventure it’s been, my children know more about farming, animals and agriculture at 4 and 7 than we knew when we came here.

How fortunate we are that the children have their papa with us every day.  All meals are shared with the most wonderful conversations of the day’s happenings, strengthening our bond and their social skills.  Fabien spends much time with the children taking them on adventure walks, jumping on the trampoline, swimming, playing, cuddling, building and creating.  The boys have an amazing bond with him. he cares for the children just as any mother would.  I’m always amazed at the patience he has with them and how he finds ways to always accommodate them under any circumstance.

Happy Birthday we love you

The gifts we made and put them into the little felt boxes

The boys felted wool over their wooden blocks to make a small capsule to hold the gift they made.  A leather string with a wooden bead for a necklace and leather for a bracelet

Papa's birthday table

The beautiful cards the children made

For the cards the children put magic wool into a plastic bag with some water and soap to felt it.  The I cut out some watercolor paper, they painted it and stuck the wool to the inside with a glue gun.  So pretty.

A drawing Sasha did for him

We baked a delicious chocolate cake

Felted Needle and Recorder Cozy

Felted Needle and Recorder Cozy

I found the project of the felted needle cozy and decided to make a similar cozy for Sasha’s recorder.    Basically you cast on the amount of stitches according to the length of the knitting needles you want to cover or recorder. Alternate knit and pearl change colors every 2 or 3 rows, adjust for width.  Sow it up, leaving one side open, put it in the washing machine to felt the wool, then twist it around to make the spiral.  Be sure to use wool otherwise it won’t felt.

“A Second treasury of Magical Knitting” by Cat Bordhi don’t know how to add the image of the book just yet, still figuring out how everything works on the blog.  There are some funky projects to make in the book some a little advanced for me.

Sasha's first knitting project in Grade 1. A little purse for a girlfriend

Three little kittens we made for Sania's birthday

My husband even learnt to knit to inspire my son.  We each decided to make a kitten for Sania’s birthday, Sasha loves preparing gifts for everyone, he loves hand made ones best of all.  Sasha knitted the little black one, I helped him put it together and my husband knitted the one on the right.

The Children’s Nature/Play Table

This is the children’s play table – the scenery is changed almost every day.   They bring in treasures from the outside or we create something from felt or magic wool.

Little wooly sheep I needle felted

Petite Chenille

The farm animals and the snail

Snail Sania made from Clay and a real snail shell